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Scientific Data May 2023The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public...
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public health behaviour, we present a dataset comprising of 51,404 individuals from 69 countries. This dataset was collected for the International Collaboration on Social & Moral Psychology of COVID-19 project (ICSMP COVID-19). This social science survey invited participants around the world to complete a series of moral and psychological measures and public health attitudes about COVID-19 during an early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (between April and June 2020). The survey included seven broad categories of questions: COVID-19 beliefs and compliance behaviours; identity and social attitudes; ideology; health and well-being; moral beliefs and motivation; personality traits; and demographic variables. We report both raw and cleaned data, along with all survey materials, data visualisations, and psychometric evaluations of key variables.
Topics: Humans; Attitude; COVID-19; Morals; Pandemics; Surveys and Questionnaires; Social Change; Socioeconomic Factors
PubMed: 37169799
DOI: 10.1038/s41597-023-02080-8 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2022(CCM) provides a promising avenue to guide persuasive communication development by highlighting the features of the communication context that require consideration,...
(CCM) provides a promising avenue to guide persuasive communication development by highlighting the features of the communication context that require consideration, including , , and variables. The model was tested in a study of global climate change. American participants read a text outlining scientific evidence for global climate change and a policy proposal to mitigate future climate change. Prior to reading the text, participants' completed measures of their political affiliation (Republican, Democrats, Independent or Other) to render their group memberships salient. They were randomly assigned to one of four source conditions: (a) ingroup minority; (b) ingroup majority; (c) outgroup minority; or (d) outgroup minority. Participants completed pre- and post-measures of attitudes and the plausibility of climate change. Pretest scores revealed that global climate change attitudes were held less strongly by Republicans than Democrats. In line with expectations, participants' subjective attitudes were more influenced by ingroup sources, and larger persuasive effects were obtained for ingroup minorities. For the plausibility of climate change, participants were more persuaded by an outgroup source, and larger effects were evident for outgroup majorities. Results were precisely predicted by the CCM. Their implications for science communication were discussed.
PubMed: 35992407
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.897460 -
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Aug 2023In line with the concept of mobile learning in English Language Teaching (ELT), the aim of this research is to explore how Iranian ELT practitioners take advantage of...
In line with the concept of mobile learning in English Language Teaching (ELT), the aim of this research is to explore how Iranian ELT practitioners take advantage of social media to propose supportive and impactful language learning programs by adhering to persuasive linguistic devices. The research design is nonexperimental and explorative. ELT-related commercial videos and pictures were identified on social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. We delved into the syntactic and pragmatic features of the data on ELT-related ads to identify the persuasive techniques and strategies these ads resort to for attracting language learners to online classes and services. To analyze the data, the widely-used and acknowledged Cialdini's (The psychology of persuasion, Quill William Morrow, 1984) principles of persuasion are employed. The results manifested that 'reciprocity' and 'scarcity' were the most used persuasive strategies, while 'commitment and consistency' and 'consensus' were the least favorable persuasion principles in these ads. The analysis of the Iranian ELT-related ads indicated that the language used within this context is purposeful and strategic. A contextual investigation of the ELT-related ads on social media can meaningfully contribute to social practices underlying English language pedagogy and digital literacy.
Topics: Humans; Persuasive Communication; Social Media; Advertising; Iran; Language
PubMed: 36853477
DOI: 10.1007/s10936-023-09942-7 -
Scientific Reports Dec 2022Polarisation of opinions across communities can lead to social conflict, reputational damage and the disruption of operations and markets. Social influence models have...
Polarisation of opinions across communities can lead to social conflict, reputational damage and the disruption of operations and markets. Social influence models have been widely used to better understand processes driving conflict from a theoretical perspective. Using aquaculture as a case study, we demonstrate how such models can be extended to accurately hindcast the transition from population consensus to high conflict, including observed catastrophic tipping points. We then use the model to quantitatively evaluate strategies aimed at reducing aquaculture conflict. We found that persuasive advocacy was ineffective and often counterproductive, whereas meaningful engagement, collaborative learning and improving scientific literacy targeted broadly across the population was effective in moderating opinions and reducing conflict. When such messaging was targeted too narrowly or too infrequently, it tended to be negated by ongoing exchange of misinformation within the population. Both the modelling approach and lessons on effective communication strategies are relevant to a broad range of environmental conflicts.
Topics: Consensus; Communication; Literacy; Persuasive Communication; Longitudinal Studies
PubMed: 36539554
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-26570-8 -
Psychological Science Mar 2022Moral framing and reframing strategies persuade people holding moralized attitudes (i.e., attitudes having a moral basis). However, these strategies may have unintended...
Moral framing and reframing strategies persuade people holding moralized attitudes (i.e., attitudes having a moral basis). However, these strategies may have unintended side effects: They have the potential to moralize people's attitudes further and as a consequence lower their willingness to compromise on issues. Across three experimental studies with adult U.S. participants (Study 1: = 2,151, Study 2: = 1,590, Study 3: = 1,015), we used persuasion messages (moral, nonmoral, and control) that opposed new big-data technologies (crime-surveillance technologies and hiring algorithms). We consistently found that moral frames were persuasive and moralized people's attitudes, whereas nonmoral frames were persuasive and de-moralized people's attitudes. Moral frames also lowered people's willingness to compromise and reduced behavioral indicators of compromise. Exploratory analyses suggest that feelings of anger and disgust may drive moralization, whereas perceiving the technologies to be financially costly may drive de-moralization. The findings imply that use of moral frames can increase and entrench moral divides rather than bridge them.
Topics: Adult; Anger; Attitude; Emotions; Humans; Morals; Persuasive Communication
PubMed: 35213257
DOI: 10.1177/09567976211040803 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Nov 2021Concerns about video-based political persuasion are prevalent in both popular and academic circles, predicated on the assumption that video is more compelling than text....
Concerns about video-based political persuasion are prevalent in both popular and academic circles, predicated on the assumption that video is more compelling than text. To date, however, this assumption remains largely untested in the political domain. Here, we provide such a test. We begin by drawing a theoretical distinction between two dimensions for which video might be more efficacious than text: 1) one's belief that a depicted event actually occurred and 2) the extent to which one's attitudes and behavior are changed. We test this model across two high-powered survey experiments varying exposure to politically persuasive messaging (total = 7,609 Americans; 26,584 observations). Respondents were shown a selection of persuasive messages drawn from a diverse sample of 72 clips. For each message, they were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a short video, a detailed transcript of the video, or a control condition. Overall, we find that individuals are more likely to believe an event occurred when it is presented in video versus textual form, but the impact on attitudes and behavioral intentions is much smaller. Importantly, for both dimensions, these effects are highly stable across messages and respondent subgroups. Moreover, when it comes to attitudes and engagement, the difference between the video and text conditions is comparable to, if not smaller than, the difference between the text and control conditions. Taken together, these results call into question widely held assumptions about the unique persuasive power of political video over text.
Topics: Attitude; Communications Media; Female; Generalization, Psychological; Humans; Intention; Male; Middle Aged; Persuasive Communication; Politics; Surveys and Questionnaires; Text Messaging; Video Recording
PubMed: 34782473
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2114388118 -
Social Science & Medicine (1982) Oct 2021Callard and Perego depict long Covid as the first illness to be defined by patients who came together on social media. Responding to their call to address why patients...
Callard and Perego depict long Covid as the first illness to be defined by patients who came together on social media. Responding to their call to address why patients were so effective in making long Covid visible and igniting action to improve its care, we use narrative inquiry - a field of research that investigates the place and power of stories and storytelling. We analyse a large dataset of narrative interviews and focus groups with 114 people with long Covid (45 of whom were healthcare professionals) from the United Kingdom, drawing on socio-narratology (Frank), therapeutic emplotment (Mattingly) and polyphonia (Bakhtin). We describe how storytelling devices including chronology, metaphor, characterisation, suspense and imagination were used to create persuasive accounts of a strange and frightening new condition that was beset with setbacks and overlooked or dismissed by health professionals. The most unique feature of long Covid narratives (in most but not all cases) was the absence, for various pandemic-related reasons, of a professional witness to them. Instead of sharing their narratives in therapeutic dialogue with their own clinician, people struggled with a fragmented inner monologue before finding an empathetic audience and other resonant narratives in the online community. Individually, the stories seemed to make little sense. Collectively, they provided a rich description of the diverse manifestations of a grave new illness, a shared account of rejection by the healthcare system, and a powerful call for action to fix the broken story. Evolving from individual narrative postings to collective narrative drama, long Covid communities challenged the prevailing model of Covid-19 as a short-lived respiratory illness which invariably delivers a classic triad of symptoms; undertook and published peer-reviewed research to substantiate its diverse and protracted manifestations; and gained positions as experts by experience on guideline development groups and policy taskforces.
Topics: COVID-19; Communication; Humans; Narration; SARS-CoV-2; Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome
PubMed: 34425522
DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114326 -
Acta Informatica Medica : AIM : Journal... Dec 2019Dissemination benefits come from the outputs integration and implementation by the key audience, who will also determine the relevance and usability of the disseminated...
INTRODUCTION
Dissemination benefits come from the outputs integration and implementation by the key audience, who will also determine the relevance and usability of the disseminated content.
AIM
One of the CrowdHEALTH project's objectives is the transition from patient health records towards the Holistic Health Records (HHRs) and Social HHR. The CrowdHEALTH project aims at integrating high volumes of health-related data collected from various sources to support policy-making decisions.
METHODS
The European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI) supports the development of an effective Communication and Collaboration Plan identifying the messages, the tools and channels in disseminating the project and its outcomes to the target audience based on the McGuire approach.
RESULTS
The process for defining the dissemination strategy is a cyclic one as shown in the following figure involving review of each step periodically The next step was to define the four dimension dissemination approach based on McGuire attributes of persuasive communication. The objectives, target groups, key messages, the tools and channels where defined at this stage.
CONCLUSION
The CrowdHEALTH project and its outcomes were disseminated with a variety of tools and channels such as scientific journals, conferences, exhibitions and social media communication.
PubMed: 32210503
DOI: 10.5455/aim.2019.27.348-354 -
Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem 2021to evaluate the effect of persuasive communication in the modulation of the behavioral intention of reducing the consumption of salt in heart failure patients.
OBJECTIVES
to evaluate the effect of persuasive communication in the modulation of the behavioral intention of reducing the consumption of salt in heart failure patients.
METHODS
pilot quasi-experimental study with one group, before and after the application of audiovisual persuasive communication, as guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior. This study used a form built and validated to measure behavioral variables (Beliefs, Attitude, Subjective Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control). Wilcoxon's test and Spearman's correlation were applied.
RESULTS
82 heart failure patients who were being monitored in outpatient clinics participated. The medians of the behavioral variables increased significantly after the exposition to persuasive communication, showing a high level of intention to execute the behavior.
CONCLUSIONS
persuasive communication positively contributed to influence the behavioral intention of reducing the consumption of salt in people with cardiac insufficiency.
Topics: Heart Failure; Humans; Persuasive Communication; Pilot Projects; Psychological Theory; Sodium Chloride, Dietary; Surveys and Questionnaires
PubMed: 34133675
DOI: 10.1590/0034-7167-2020-0715 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Apr 2021Many visible public debates over scientific issues are clouded in accusations of falsehood, which place increasing demands on citizens to distinguish fact from fiction....
Many visible public debates over scientific issues are clouded in accusations of falsehood, which place increasing demands on citizens to distinguish fact from fiction. Yet, constraints on our ability to detect misinformation coupled with our inadvertent motivations to believe false science result in a high likelihood that we will form misperceptions. As science falsehoods are often presented with emotional appeals, we focus our perspective on the roles of emotion and humor in the formation of science attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors. Recent research sheds light on how funny science and emotions can help explain and potentially overcome our inability or lack of motivation to recognize and challenge misinformation. We identify some lessons learned from these related and growing areas of research and conclude with a brief discussion of the ethical considerations of using persuasive strategies, calling for more dialogue among members of the science communication community.
Topics: Deception; Emotions; Health Communication; Humans
PubMed: 33837148
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2002484118